Sony Ericsson chargers aren't the best designed but that what Ericsson before it became SE had before so I guess we are stuck. Nokia has the best connector in my opinion but then again maybe thats why most of their designs on the base of the phone are pretty much standard in size and structure.

K700i Battery Life and Initial Impression
I just received my k700i on Monday. Let me give a little plug here. I ordered my phone through the ebay vendor x1387. I ordered it last Friday and received it from Hong Kong on Monday. Fair price and extremely fast shipping. Came with a cd containing the sync tools and an SE users manual in English. FW: R2A041

Anyway, let me comment on the battery usage. I've read lots of do's and don'ts so I thought I'd be safe and charge the phone for 24 hours before doing anything. I didn't turn the phone on at all. NOTE: For those that have had problems with a weak charge. If you are using the 110v adapter, be careful. The charge adapter is a piece of junk and does not make a good connection when pushed in all the way. You'll hear the phone make a noise and a message will pop up saying it is charging, then the phone will go blank. If this happens, the phone is not charging. Pull the plug out a little ways until the phone lights up and displays the "Battery Charging" message all the time. My phone charged for 24 hours and the phone was continually lit up.

Last night starting at 8pm, I wanted to use the phone enough to make the battery run down and do another full charge. With all the reports I had heard about poor battery performance, I thought that would be an easy thing to do. The phone finally ran out of juice this morning at 10:30 AM.

Here is what I did and did not do.

Did NOT:
1. Make any phone calls (thought everything I would do would be enough).
2. Did not turn on bluetooth.

Did:
1. Turned on the camera light for approx. 1 hour (2x30 mins)
2. Took 15 pictures (also with the light on)
3. Deleted 15 pictures
4. Spent about 30 minutes playing all the games on the phone
5. Played the radio at full volume through the headphones for around 12 hours (put the phone in another room while I slept).

That seems like pretty good performance for an initial charge. For the next charge, I'll spend most of the time talking to get an idea on battery performance while using the phone as a phone. On the third charge, I'll incorporate turning on bluetooth and see how performance is affected.

Initial impressions.

Build quality is excellent. I like the feel of the phone better than the 2 Nokias I have owned. Very solid. Good looking phone.

Signal strength. Seems to be stronger and more consitent than my 6220 while I was comparing the two side by side. The 6220 was fluctuating between 30% and 90% while the k700i was pretty rock solid at around full strength occassionaly dropping down to 60%. I'll say I was pretty happy with the 6220, I I'm very pleased initially with the k700i signal strength. I am on T-mobile out here in Hawaii. So my comparisons are only meaningful for where I am.

Call clarity. I'll find out tomorrow after the next full charge.

Menus. Didn't use them too much, although I like the fact that each key cooresponds to an icon on the main menu. Instead of using the joystick to Navigate, you can just use the keypad. I read a lot of reports about slow menus? Hmmm... I have no complaint with the menu speed. If you think the menus are slow, chill out a bit in life and take a deep breath. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the speed of the menus.

Radio. Very strong. Pulled in a lot of stations with no static. Much better performance than my 6220.

Battery Meter. Gradual and very linear as charge capacity decreases. My 6220 stayed on full bars for a long time, but once it began to drop the bars would drop quickly. Point goes to SE.

Managing phonebook. Looking forward to working with this next.

Questionable design decisions:

WTF is up up with that plastic door covering the headphone and charge ports? Poor design. Difficult to open with short fingernails. That will be coming off next. I'll save it for if I ever sell the phone.

Sim card holder. Very secure if you never need to change your sim card. Very inconvenient if you change your sim cards a lot like I do (travel internationally). The holder in the 6220 is a much better design IMO. Maybe I'll keep a small set of tweezers on my keychain to open the battery door and extract the sim card.

I use this phone for both personal and business. Initial impressions are very high, and right now I think I have made the correct choice in the k700i (Other choices for me were e398 and n6230). I'll update with good and bad points as I use more of the features.

I understand that others do have some buggy phones and some serious issues. I guess every manufacturer will have those problems. Remains to be seen how my phone operates as I use more of the advanced features of the phone. But I wanted to give my initial impressions for those still deciding about what phone they want top purchase and the k700i is on their list.

hi my name is allan... i have a nokia 3210... is it advisable to change the housing with a fake one??? i saw this housing with glitters... looks cool... but can it damage the software??? i need expert advise... btw, i also have ericsson t-100...

From what I've read from the papers, Motorola, Samsung and Nokia will all eventually lose out to emerging Asian brands if they continue to be complacent. Who knows, we might be seeing ppl use brands such as Mitec, Mitsubishi, LG, etc...

O yea, sorry tat i forgot something.
de reviews pasted are to let readers here hav a more complete and true informations tat Nokia's market shares are dropping while some other phones are eating it's market share.
for those who cares about the mobile-phone markets, please think why is Nokia's market share dropping. And how do u think making this a discussion topic, "Why is Nokia market share dropping?"
Please reply on this topic if ur interested. thanks.

for your information, those reviews are copied from "www.infosync.no", please take a look at it.
and furthermore, pls stop arguing which brand is better, ur phone is good, my phone is good as well.
i agree with Bill, for those who wanna criticize the other brand, dont come & mess up de forum, this is a place to give comments, if u dont like ppl here giving comments or u feel uncomfortable seeing their comments, close this page & go back to ur own.
thx.

Motorola, Samsung, and LG are pushing ahead in the global mobile phone market, eating into the lead of perennial market leader Nokia.

Following the traditionally weak first quarter of the year, the mobile phone market is getting tighter as Motorola, Samsung, and LG show strong growth and Nokia sees its lead begin to slide, according to a new market study by IDC.

Although it still leads the market in overall sales with 45 million units shipped, Nokia saw its share of the market dip to 27.7% in second quarter. The company is still showing growth, however, with a sales growth of 11.8% since the same time last year. That was due in a large part to recent efforts to stabilize and flesh out its product line, which had been flagging of late.

Motorola saw its shipments more than double last year, with a 52.4% increase in sales pushing it to the number two position, also due to a rejuvenated product line. Nonetheless, it only captured 14.7% of the market. Hot on its tail, however, is Samsung with 13.9% of the market, after a dramatic 76% growth since last year. The company has several new coming down the pipes as well, and may well overtake Motorola before the year is out.

Fourth place Siemens showed a slight decrease in sales from first to second quarter, but still posted a 28.4% growth in sales year-on-year to claim 6.4% of the market. That led it to tie Sony Ericsson, whose shipments grew 55% since last year. Sony Ericsson also has a number of new products scheduled for the latter half of the year, so it may well pass Siemens and claim the fourth place spot all on its own.

Also surging ahead is LG Electronics, whose massive series of new devices in the first half of the year resulted in an 87% growth in sales since last year. As a result, LG's share of the market shot from less than one percent to 6.1% of the worldwide market. Trailing Sony Ericsson and Siemens by only 500,000 units in second quarter, LG is well positioned to shoot ahead by the end of the year.

The worldwide market for mobile phones continued to grow in the third quarter of 2003, driven by strong demand for new handsets from first-time buyers in emerging markets as well as replacement buyers in mature markets. According to IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone QView, worldwide mobile phone shipments grew by 21.2% year-over-year in 3Q03 and increased sequentially by 14.0% to 130.1 million units. Nokia maintained its top position in the market while LG Electronics regained the number 5 spot from Sony Ericsson.

In addition to the market's year-over-year growth of 21.2%, the top 5 mobile phone vendors continued to gain back market share after a dip in 1Q03. After dropping from 77.3% of the market in 4Q02 to 71.4% in 1Q03, the top 5 vendors have reclaimed much of their lost market share in 3Q03 with 76.6% of the market. At the same time, 3Q03 was the first quarter of 2003 during which the top 5 vendors all posted positive sequential growth. However, with a growing number of vendors from Asia entering the worldwide market, it remains to be seen if the top vendors can maintain their hold on market-share.

The report finds that Nokia maintained its number 1 spot this quarter with a sequential increase of 11.2%, and continued to strengthen its presence in the U.S. and global CDMA markets. However, due to the increasing market size, Nokia's market share decreased by just under a percent to 35.0%. Of particular note is the launch of the Nokia N-Gage, a gaming-centric device launched worldwide in the beginning of October. After experiencing a drop of over 5% in shipments in 2Q03, Motorola posted a 27.8% sequential increase in shipments, bringing its market share up 1.7% to 15.5% of the market and distancing itself slightly from Samsung.

Continuing on its success from the previous quarter, Samsung increased its market share from 10.5% in 2Q03 to 11.5% in 3Q03 with an increase of 3 million shipments to a total of 15 million mobile phones. Samsung attributes its increase to strong demand for its high-end handsets with color screens, cameras and camcorder functions.

Siemens' shipments grew 39.5% sequentially in 3Q03, easily solidifying itself as the number 4 vendor worldwide. Finally, rising sharply on the strength of its CDMA and GSM shipments overseas, LG Electronics re-entered IDC's top 5 list as it boosted its market share to 5.8%, just beating out Sony Ericsson at 5.5%.

Analyst firm Gartner says mobile device sales are up 22 percent in the third quarter as market leader Nokia's market share dips in the face of strong competition.

The mobile terminal industry exceeded expectations in the third quarter of 2003, as worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 132.8 million units, a 22 percent increase from the same period last year, according to analyst firm Gartner.

"The mobile terminals market is exhibiting extraordinarily strong growth in 2003, and we believe it could reach half a billion units this year," said Ben Wood, principal analyst with the mobile communications group for Gartner in Europe.

The competition among the top tier vendors is heating up, and industry leader Nokia's market share saw a decrease in the third quarter as it faced strong competition from Siemens and Samsung. LG moved into the top five, narrowly pushing Sony Ericsson into the sixth position.

"The market is growing on two fronts - we've hit a sweet spot for replacement sales in mature markets while emerging markets such as Asia/Pacific and Eastern Europe continue to sign up new subscribers at a phenomenal pace," Wood said.

In the mature markets, color mobile terminals are a growing proportion of total sales, with the volume of camera phones also increasing. Gartner analysts said demand for low-cost terminals has also continued, and that all regions of the world experienced at least 18 percent growth in the third quarter of 2003.

The North America market was driven by replacement sales, as users replaced their handsets in favor of new smaller and in many cases, color terminals.

With the introduction of mobile number portability on November 24, Gartner analysts believe this will further drive replacement sales for the region.

"The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region accounted for 35.5 percent of the world's mobile phone sales, fueled by strong replacement buying in Western Europe," said Carolina Milanesi, industry analyst for the EMEA mobile communications group for Gartner. "This was combined with strong sales in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, in particular Russia, which saw sales reach 5 million units."

"The Asia/Pacific region bounced back from SARS and was further buoyed by phenomenal growth in India," said Ann Liang, industry analyst with the mobile communications group for Gartner in Asia/Pacific. "Success in China remains crucial in the region with Motorola holding onto the top spot in the face of strong competition from Nokia."